When First the Marriage Knot was Ty'd - Solution
by
Erik Oosterwal
Once you figure out what the poem is saying, this is a fairly straight forward
algebra problem. The author of the poem states that when he married
his wife, his age was 3 times larger than his wife's age. Fifteen years
later, his age was only 2 times as large as his wife's age. How old
were the couple when they got married?
To solve for two unknown variables, we need two equations:
1) H = 3W Husband
is equal to 3 times Wife
2) H+15 = 2(W+15) 15 years later, Husband is equal to 2 times
Wife.
Since we know from the first equations that H is the same as 3W, we replace
the H in the second equation with 3W...
3) 3W+15 = 2(W+15)
Expanding the right hand side of equation 3 gives...
4) 3W+15 = 2W+30
Now we can subtract 15 from both sides of equation 4...
5) 3W = 2W+15
Subtracting 2W from both sides of equation 5 leaves...
6) W = 15
Since we know from equation 1 that Husband's age is 3 times Wife's age, we
can deduce that at the time of the wedding, Wife was 15 years old, and Husband
was 45 years old. Fifteen years later, Wife would be 30 years old and
Husband would be 60 years old, which fulfills the requirements of equation
2.
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